Is Childhood Obesity Child Abuse?
Watch the video on YouTube.
CNN’s Paula Zahn interviews the president of National Action Against Obesity, MeMe Roth. The talk centers on whether a parent overfeeding their child constitutes abuse.
The case in question in this video is a troubling one. It focuses on a child who was more than 200 pounds overweight. Government child protection agencies had given the mother multiple warnings about providing proper care for her son. Those warnings had gone unheeded, until authorities finally stepped in and removed the child from the home. The case in this video happened in the U.K., but many state courts in the U.S. have been struggling with the question recently as well. For example, a 14-year-old boy who weighed 555 pounds was taken from his parents in South Carolina last summer.
Child Abuse
Zahn and Roth both advocate government intervention in cases of childhood obesity.
“I’ve gone on the record and said that obesity is absolutely child abuse,” says Roth. “It’s on the books in every state that jeopardizing the health of your child is against the law.”
Roth says that parents are ultimately responsible for the weight of their children, and if they’re not keeping their kids healthy, the government should step in. Critics, however, point out that this would lead to an unprecedented number of child protective custody cases, considering the number of obese or overweight children in the U.S.
Dr Kal’s Addendum:
I do believe that allowing your child to become obese is child abuse. Just as allowing your child to become a drug addict or alcoholic is child abuse. While that is easy for me to say, I am not sure what the government can do to protect these children. There are just too many of them.
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